Letters from a Chinese official [microform] : being an Eastern view of Western civilization

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

LETTERS FROM

A CHINESE OFFICIAL-
BEING AN EASTERN VIEW OF
WESTERN CIVILIZATION

3 G, u>, I >

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

MCMXV

COPYEICHT, 1008, BY

DOUBLBDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN
EDITION

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN
EDITION

In venturing to lay the following letters before
the American public, I feel that I may be ex-
pected to preface them by a word of explana-
tion, if not of apology. Written originally for
the English, they touch upon specifically Eng-
lish institutions: and the few references they
contain to contemporary history and politics are
such as would naturally be of interest rather to
European than to American readers. Regarded
from this point of view, their publication in the
United States might seem to be irrelevant, and
even impertinent. And yet I venture to think
that, if they have any significance, it is of a
kind that should appeal with a peculiar force
to Americans. For their interest, such as it is,
depends, not upon topical allusions, but upon
the whole contrast suggested between Eastern
vii

INTRODUCTION

and Western ideals. And America, in a pre-
eminent degree, is representative of the West.
For a century past she has drawn to herself, by
an irresistible attraction, the boldest, the most
masterful, the most practically intelligent of the
spirits of Europe; just as, by the same law, she
has repelled the sensitive, the contemplative, and
the devout Unconsciously, by the mere fact of
her existence, she has sifted the nations; the
children of the Spirit have slipped through the
iron net of her destinies, but the children of the
World she has gathered into her granaries.
She h.is thns become, in a sense peculiar and
unique, the type and exemplar of the Western
world. Over her unencumbered plains the
(it'iiius of Industry ranges unchallenged, niked,
unashamed. Whereas, in Europe, it has still to
fight for its supremacy; for there it is con-
fronted with the debris of an earlier society,
with ideals, habits, institutions, monuments, tra-
ditions, alien to its achievement and incompre-
hensible to its aims. Cathedral churches, gray
in the north and sublime as the cliffs and the
viii

INTRODUCTION

clouds, exuberant in the south with color and
form like the lovely landscape they adorn, tes-
tify to the passage of a religion which, whatever
its defects, had at least the merit of spiritual
audacity. Splendid palaces, manors, and parks,
ancient moss-grown cottages, perpetuate the tra-
dition of ranks and orders, ancient, hereditary,
and fixed. Titles, forms, manners, habits, a whole
ritual of life, proclaim a standard, vanishing no
doubt, of merit and of duty, not yet convertible
into terms of money. A conception that leisure
may be noble, and that activity may be base,
that there is an inner, as well as an outer life,
and that the latter, on any reasonable estimate,
has value only as minister to the former, such a
conception still survives, efficient in individual
lives, and embodied in works of literature and
of art. In Europe, in a word, the modern spirit
has to contend with an ancient culture; and its
methods and results are modified and trans-
formed by the conflict. But in America it is
free; and whatever truth there may be in my
analysis of its character snd operation, should
ix

INTRODUCTION

be illustrated, one would expect, on a larger
scale, in bolder and more uncompromising man-
ifestations, on this continent than in any of the
countries of Europe. Whether that be so or not,
I must leave to the candor of my American
readers. But if it be, then, as I cannot but
think, a serioys issue is raised as to the future
not merely of the United States, but of the whole
Western world.

For it is impossible not to recognize that the
destinies of Europe are closely bound up with
those of this country; and that what is at stake
in the development of the American Republic
is nothing less than the success or failure of
Western civilization. Endowed, above all the
nations of the world, with intelligence, energy,
and force, unhampered by the splendid ruins of
a past which, however great, does but encumber,
in the old world, with fears, hesitations, and re-
grets, the difficult march to the promised land
of the future, combining the magnificent enthu-
siasm of youth with the wariness of maturer
years, and animated by a confidence almost re-
x

INTRODUCTION

ligious in their own destiny, the American
people are called upon, it would seem, to deter-
mine, in a pre-eminent degree, the form that is
to be assumed by the society of the future.

Upon them hangs the fate of the Western world.

•
And were I an American citizen, the thought

would fill me, I confess, less with exultation than
with anxious and grave reflection. I should ask
myself whether the triumphs gained by my
countrymen over matter and space had been se-
cured at the cost of spiritual insight and force;
whether their immense achievement in the de-
velopment of the practical arts had been accom-
panied by any serious contribution to science,
literature, and art; whether, in a word, the soul
had grown with the body, or was tending to
atrophy and decay. And looking back over the
long history of mankind, considering the record
of the nations who have borne in succession the
torch of civilization which England, even now,
is handing across to America, considering all
that is disappearing in Europe and all that has
not yet begun to show itself here, I should feel
xi

INTRODUCTION

that Humanity is standing at the parting of the
ways, that it is confronted with an issue of a
gravity and importance unparalleled, perhaps,
since the fall of the Roman Empire. That issue
I would put somewhat as follows: Is that
which created the religion, the art, the specula-
tion of the Past ; that insatiable hunger for Eter-
nity which, by a sacramental mystery, has
transubstantiated into the heavenly essence of
the Ideal, the base and quotidian elements of the
Actual; that spirit of unquenchable aspiration
which has assumed, in its tireless quest for em-
bodiment, J"orms so alluring, so terrible, so di-
vine, which has luxuriated in the jungle of Hin-
doo myths, blossomed in the Pantheon of the
Greeks, suffered on the cross, perished at the
stake, wasted in the cloister and the cell, whicji
has given life to marble, substance to color,
structure to fugitive sound, which has fashioned
a palace of fire and cloud to inhabit for its de-
sire, and deemed it, for its beauty, more dear
and more real than kingdoms of iron and gold;
— is that hunger, in the future as in the past,
xii

INTRODUCTION

to harass and hunt us from our styes? Is that
spirit to urge as of old the reluctant wheels of
our destiny? Or are we to fill our belly with
the husks of comfort, security, and peace? To
crush in the dust under our Juggernaut car that
delicate charioteer? Are we to be spirits or in-
telligent brutes; men or mere machines? That
is the question now put, as it has never been put
before, to the nations of the West, and pre-em-
inently to the people of these States. Doubtless,
were I an American, I should not question the
capacity of my countrymen to answer it, and to
answer it in the best and most fruitful sense.
Yet the consciousness of the immensity of the
problem would, I think, check at the birth any
tendency which I might otherwise have indulged
to premature exultation. For I should feel that
the work had hardly been begun, that the foun-
dations were barely laid ; nay, that the very plan
of the building was not yet drawn out. And
looking across the ocean, to Europe and to the
far East, I should be anxious, not indeed to im-
itate the forms, but to appropriate the inspira-
xiii

INTRODUCTION

tion of that ancient world which created man-
ners, laws, religion, art, whose history is the
record not merely of the body, but of the soul
of mankind, and whose spirit, already escaping
from the forms in which it had found a partial
embodiment, is hovering even now at your gates
in quest of a new and more perfect incarnation.
Will you not receive it ? I do not doubt that you
will, if not to-day, then to-morrow, if not to-
morrow, then the day after. And if, in any
smallest way, these few imperfect pages may
contribute to prepare for it a welcome among
you, you perhaps will pardon their defects, in
recognition of a sincere intention, and will tol-
erate, even from a stranger, a certain freedom
of speech which otherwise you might not unnat-
urally resent as an impertinence.

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

Recent events in China have brought into new
prominence at once the fundamental antagonism
between Eastern and Western civilization, and
that ignorance and contempt of the one for the
other which is mainly responsible for the present
situation. In the face of the tragedy that is being
enacted, I have long held my peace. But a grow-
ing sense of indignation, and a hope, perhaps
illusory, that I may contribute to remove certain
misunderstandings, have impelled me at last to
open my lips, and to lay before the British public
some views which have long been crying for ut-
terance. Of the immediate crisis I do not pro-
pose to speak. It is my object rather to pro-
mote a juster estimate of my countrymen and
their policy, by explaining, as far as I am able,
the way in which we regard Western civilization,
and the reasons we have for desiring to exclude
its influences. For such a task I conceive

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

to be not altogether unfit. A long residence in
England gives me some right to speak of your
institutions; while absence from my own country
has not disqualified me to speak of ours. A
Chinaman remains always a Chinaman; and
much as I admire in some of its aspects the
achievement of Western civilization, I have yet
seen nothing which could make me regret that I
was born a citizen of the East. To Englishmen
this may seem a strange confession. You are
accustomed to regard us as barbarians, and not
unnaturally, for it is only on the occasions when
we murder your compatriots that your attention
is powerfully drawn toward us. From such
spasmodic outbreaks you are apt overhastily to
infer that we are a nation of cold-blooded assas-
sins; a conclusion as reasonable as would be an
inference from the present conduct of your
troops in China to the general character of West-
ern civilization. We are not to be judged by
the acts of our mobs, nor even, I may add, by
those of our Government, for the Government in
C1 ' -a does not represent the nation. Yet even
r -

LETTERS FROM A CHIVES OFFICIAL

those acts (strongly as they are condemned by
all educated Chinamen) deserve, I venture to
think, on the part of Europeans, a consideration
more grave, and a less intemperate reprobation,
than they have hitherto received among you.
For they are expressions of a feeling which is,
and must always be, the most potent factor in
our relations with the West-C-our profound mis-

trust and dislike of your civilization.' This feel-

*-' _M^ ^ ^ ••**

ing you, naturally enough, attribute to prejudice
and ignorance. In reality, I venture to think, it
is based upon reason ; and for this point of view
I would ask the serious and patient considera-
tion of my readers.

Our civilization is the oldest in the world. It
does not follow that it is the best; but neither, I
submit, does it follow that it is the worst. On
the contrary, such antiquity is, at any rate, a
proof that our institutions have guaranteed to us
a stability for which we search in vain among the
nations of Europe. But not only is our civiliza-
tion stable, it also embodies, as we think, a moral
order ; while in yours we detect only an economic

Ul

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

chaos. Whether your religion be better than
ours, I do not at present dispute ; but it is certain
that it has less influence on your society. You
profess Christianity, but your civilization has
never been Christian; whereas ours is Confucian
through and through. But to say that it is
Confucian, is to say that it is moral; or, at least
(for I do not wish to beg the question), that
moral relations are those which it primarily con-
templates. Whereas, with you (so it seems to
us) economic relations come first, and upon these
you endeavor, afterward, to graft as much
morality as they will admit

This point I may illustrate by a comparison
between your view of the family and ours. To
you, so far as a foreigner can perceive, the f am-
ily is merely a means for nourishing and pro-
tecting the child until he is of age to look after
himself. As early as may be, you send your
boys away to a public school, where they quickly
emancipate themselves from the influences of
their home. As soon as they are of age, you send
them out, as you say, to "make their fortune";
[6]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

and from that moment, often enough, as they
cease to be dependent on their parents, so they
cease to recognize obligations toward them.
They may go where they will, do what they will,
earn and spend as they choose ; and it is at their
own option whether or no they maintain their
family ties. x With you the individual is the unit;
and all the units are free/ No one is tied, but
also no one is rooted. Your society, to use your
own word, is "progressive"; you are always
"moving on." Everyone feels it a duty (and
in most cases it is a necessity) to strike out a
new line for himself. To remain in the position
in which you were born you consider a disgrace;
a man, to be a man, must venture, struggle, com-
pete, and win. To this characteristic of your so-
ciety is to be attributed, no doubt, its immense
activity, and its success in all material arts.
But to this, also, is due the feature that most
strikes a Chinaman — its unrest, its confusion,
its lack (as we think) of morality. Among you
no one is contented, no one has leisure to live,
•o intent are all on increasing the means of liv.-
[7]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

ing. The "cash-nexus" (to borrow a phrase of
one of your own writers) is the only relation you
recognize among men.

Now, to us of the East all this is the mark of
a barbarous society. We measure the degree of
civilization not by accumulation of the means of
living, but by the character and value of the life

lived, i Where there are no humane and stable

%

relations, no reverence for the past, no respect
even for the present, but only a cupidinous rav-
ishment of the future, there, we think, there is
no true society. And we would not if we could
rival you in your wealth, your sciences, and your
arts, if we must do so at the cost of imitating
your institutions.

In all these matters, our own procedure is the
opposite to yours. We look first to the society
and then to the individual. Among us, it is a
rule that a man is born into precisely those
relations in which he is to continue during the
course of his life. As he begins, so he ends, a
member of his family group, and to this condi-
tion the whole theory and practice of his life

LETTERS FROM A CHIKEPR OFFICIAL

conforms. He is taught to worship his ancestors,
to honor and obey his parents, and to prepare
himself from an early age for the duties of a
husband and a father. • Marriage does not dis-
solve the family; the husband remains, and the
wife becomes a member of his group of kinsmen.
And this group is the social unit. ' It has its
common plot of ground, its common altar and
rites, its tribunal for settling disputes among its
members. No man in China is isolated, save by
his own fault. If it is not so easy for him to
grow rich as with you, neither is it so easy for
him to starve; if he has not the motive to com-
pete, neither has he the temptation to cheat and
oppress. Free at once from the torment of am-
bition and the apprehension of distress, he has
leisure to spare from the acquisition of the means
of living for life itself. He has both the instinct
and the opportunity to appreciate the gifts of
Nature, to cultivate manners, and to enter into
humane and disinterested relations with his fel-
lows. The result is a type which we cannot but
regard as superior, both morally and aesthetically ,

[91

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

to the great bulk of your own citizens in Europe.
And while we recognize the greatness of your
practical and scientific achievements, yet we find
it impossible unreservedly to admire a civiliza-
tion which has produced manners so coarse,
morals so low, and an appearance so unlovely as
those with which we are constantly confronted
in your great cities. Admitting that we are not
what you call a progressive people, we yet per-
ceive that progress may be bought too dear.
We prefer our own moral to your material ad-
vantages, and we are determined to cling to the
institutions which, we believe, insure us the for-
mer, even at the risk of excluding ourselves from
the latter.

1 10]

II

In my last letter I endeavored to give some
general account of the salient differences be-
tween your civilization and ours. Such differ-
ences have led inevitably to conflict; and recent
events might seem to give some color to the idea
that in that conflict it is we who have been the
aggressors. But nothing in fact can be further
from the truth. ( Left to ourselves, we should
never have sought intercourse with the West.
We have no motive to do so ; for we desire neither
to proselytize nor to trade. We believe, it is
true, that our religion is more rational than yours,
our morality higher, and our institutions more
perfect; but we recognize that what is suited to
us may be ill adapted to others. We do not con-
ceive that we have a mission to redeem or to
civilize the world, still less that that mission is
to be accomplished by the methods of fire and

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

sword; and we are thankful enough if we can
solve our own problems, without burdening our-
selves with those of other peoples.

And as we are not led to interfere with you by
the desire to convert you, so are we not driven
to do so by the necessities of trade. Economi-
cally, as well as politically, we are sufficient to
ourselves. What we consume we produce, and
what we produce we consume. We do not re-
quire, and we have not sought, the products of
other nations; and we hold it no less imprudent
than unjust to make war on strangers in order
to oien their marketsi A society, we conceive,
that is to be politicallystable must be economi-
cally independent; and we regard an extensive
foreign trade as necessarily a source of social
demoralization, j

In these, &An all other points, your principle
is the opposite to ours. You believe, not only
that your religion is the only true one, but that it
is your duty to impose it on all other nations, if
need be, at the point of the sword. And this
motive of aggression is reinforced by another
[12]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

still more potent. Economically, your society is
so constituted that it is constantly on the verge
of starvation. You cannot produce what you
need to consume, nor consume what you need
to produce. It is matter of life and death to you
to find markets in which you may dispose of your
manufactures, and from which you may derive
your food and raw material. Such a market
China is, or might be; and the opening of this
market is in fact the motive, thinty disguised, of
all your dealings with us in recent years. The
justice and morality of such a policy I do not
propose to discuss. It is, in fact, the product of
sheer material necessity, and upon such a ground
it is idle to dispute. I shall confine myself there-
fore to an endeavor to present our view of the
situation, and to explain the motives we have for
resenting your aggression.

To the ordinary British trader it seems no
doubt a strange thing that we should object to
what he describes as the opening out of our
national resources. Viewing everything, as he
habitually does, from the standpoint of profit and
[13]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

loss, he conceives that if it can be shown that a
certain course will lead to the increase of wealth,
it follows that that is the course that ought to be
adopted. The opening of China to his capital
and his trade he believes will have this result;
and he concludes that it is our interest to wel-
come rather than to resist his enterprise. From
his point of view he is justified; but his point of
view is not ours. We are accustomed, before
adopting any grave measure of policy, to esti-
mate its effects not merely on the sum total of
our wealth, but (which we conceive to be a very
different thing) on our national well-being.
You, as always, are thinking of the means of
living; we, of the quality of the life lived. And
when you ask us, as you do in effect, to transform
our whole society, to convert ourselves from a
nation of agriculturists to a nation of traders
and manufacturers, to sacrifice to an imaginary
prosperity our political and economic indepen-
dence, and to revolutionize not only our industry,
but our manners, morals, and institutions, we
may b°. pardoned if we first take a critical look
[14]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

at the effects which have been produced among
yourselves by the conditions you urge us to in-
troduce in China.

The results of such a survey, we venture to
think, are not encouraging. Like the prince in
the fable, you seem to have released from his
prison the genie of competition^ only to find that
you are unable to control him/ Your legislation
for the past hundred years is a perpetual and
fruitless effort to regulate the disorders of your
economic system. J Your poor, your drunk, your
incompetent, your sick, your aged, ride you like
a nightmare. You have dissolved all human and
personal ties, and you endeavor, in vain, to re-
place them by the impersonal activity of the
State. The salient characteristic of your civili-
zation is its irresponsibility. You have liberated
forces you cannot control; you are caught your-
selves in your own levers and cogs. In every
department of business you are substituting for
the individual the company, for the workman
the tool. The making of dividends is the univer-
sal preoccupation; the well-being of the laborer
[15]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

is no one's concern but the State's. And this
concern even the State is incompetent to under-
take, for the factors by which it is determined
are beyond its control. You depend on varia-
tions of supply and demand which you can
neither determine nor anticipate. The failure
of a harvest, the modification of a tariff in some
remote country, dislocates the industry of mill-
ions, thousands of miles away. You are at the
mercy of a prospector's luck, an inventor's
genius, a woman's caprice — nay, you are at the
mercy of your own instruments. Your capital
is alive, and cries for food ; starve it and it turns
and throttles you. You produce, not because
you will, but because you must; you consume,
not what you choose, but what is forced upon
you. Never was any trade so bound as this
which you call free ; but it is bound, not by a rea-
sonable will, but by the accumulated irrationality
of caprice.

Such is the internal economy of your State, as
it presents itself to a Chinaman; and not more
encouraging is the spectacle of your foreign re-
[16]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

lations. Commercial intercourse between na-
tions, it was supposed some fifty years ago,
would inaugurate an era of peace; and there
appear to be many among you who still cling to
this belief. But never was, belief more plainly
contradicted by the facts. The competition for
markets bids fair to be a more fruitful cause of
war than was ever in the past the ambition of
princes or the bigotry of priests.; The peoples
of Europe fling themselves, like hungry beasts
of prey, on every yet unexploited quarter of the
globe. Hitherto they have confined their acts
of spoliation to those whom they regard as out-
side their own pale. But always, while they di-
vide the spoil, they watch one another with a
jealous eye; and sooner or later, when there is
nothing left to divide, they will fall upon one
another. / That is the real meaning of your ar-
maments ; you must devour or be devoured. ) And
it is precisely those trade relations, which it was
thought would knit you in the bonds of peace,
which, by making every one of you cut-throat
rivals of the others, have brought you within
117]

LETTERS FEOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

reasonable distance of a general war of exter-
mination.

In thus characterizing your civilization, I am
not (I think) carried away by a foolish Chauvin-
ism, I do not conceive the inhabitants of Europe
to be naturally more foolish and depraved than
those of China. On the contrary^ it is a cardinal
tenet of our faith, that human nature is every-
where the same, and that it is circumstances that
make it good or bad. If, then, your economy,
internal or external, be really as defective as we
conceive, the cause we think must be sought not
in any radical defect in your national character,
but in precisely those political and social institu-
tions which you are urging us to adopt at home.
Can you wonder, in the circumstances, that we
resist your influence by any means at our com-
mand; and that the more intelligent among us,
while they regret the violence to which your
agents have been exposed, yet feel that it weighs
as nothing in the scale, when set against the
intolerable evils which would result from the
success of your enterprise ?
[18]

Ill

In one of your journals I recently read that
"the civilization of China" is the ultimate object
of the nations of Europe. If so, the methods
they adopt to attain their end are singular in-
deed: but of these I do not trust myself to speak.
Looting, wanton destruction, cold-blooded mur-
der, and rape, these are the things which you
do not, I know, here in England approve, which
you would prevent, I am convinced, if you could,
and which I am willing to set down to the license
of ill-disciplined troops. It is for another pur-
pose than that of idle deprecation that I refer
to them in this place. ( The question always be-
fore my mind when you speak of civilization is
this: What kind of men has your civilization
produced? And to such a question current
events in China seem to suggest an answer not
altogether reassuring. But that answer I do
not press. It may be that all culture, ours as
much as yours, is no more than a veneer; that
[19]

LETTEUS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

deep in the den of every human heart lurks the
brute, ready to leap on its prey when chance or
design has unbarred the gates. We at any rate,
in China, lie 'under the same condemnation as
you; and our reproaches, like yours, fly back to
the mouths of them that utter them. I pass,
therefore, from sce»es like these to normal con-
ditions of life. /What manner of men, I ask,
are we, what manner of men are you, that you
shoulcl^take upon yourselves to call us barba-
rians ?

What manner of men are we? The question
is hard to answer. Turning it over in my
thoughts, hour after hour, day after day, I can
hit on no better device to bring home to you
something of what is in my mind than to en-
deavor to set down here, as faithfully as I can,
a picture that never ceases to haunt my memory
as I walk in these dreary winter days the streets
of your black Metropolis.

Far away in the East, under sunshine such as
you never saw (for even such light as you have
you •tain and infect with sooty smoke), on the
[20]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

shore of a broad river stands the house where I
was born. It is one among thousands ; but every
one stands in its own garden, simply painted in
white or gray, modest, cheerful, and clean. For
many miles along the valley, one after the other,
they lift their blue- or red-tiled roofs out of a
sea of green; while here and there glitters out
over a clump of trees the gold enamel of some
tall pagoda. The river, crossed by frequent
bridges and crowded with barges and junks,
bears on its clear stream the traffic of thriving
village-markets. For prosperous peasants peo-
ple all the district, owning and tilling the fields
their fathers owned and tilled before them.
The soil on which they work, they may say, they
and their ancestors have made. For see ! almost
to the summit what once were barren hills are
waving green with cotton and rice, sugar,
oranges, and tea. Water drawn from the river-
bed girdles the slopes with silver; and falling
from channel to channel in a thousand bright
cascades, plashing in cisterns, chuckling in pipes,
soaking and oozing in the soil, distributes freely
[21]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

to all alike fertility, verdure, and life. Hour
after hour you may traverse, by tortuous paths,
over tiny bridges, the works of the generations
who have passed, the labors of their children of
to-day; till you reach the point where man suc-
cumbs and Nature has her way, covering the
highest crags with a mantle of azure and gold
and rose, gardenia, clematis, azalea, growing
luxuriantly wild. How often here have I sat
for hours in a silence so intense that, as one of
our poets has said, "you may hear the shadows
of the trees rustling on the ground"; a silence
broken only now and again from far below by
voices of laborers calling across the water-
courses, or, at evening or dawn, by the sound
of gongs summoning to worship from the tem-
ples in the valley. Such silence ! Such sounds !
Such perfume! Such color! The senses re-
spond to their objects; they grow exquisite to
a degree you cannot well conceive in your north-
ern climate; and beauty pressing in from with-
out moulds the spirit and mind insensibly to
harmony with herself. If in China we have man-
[22]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

ners, if we have art, if we have morals, the
reason, to those who can see, is not far to seek.
( Nature has taught us; and so far, we are only
more fortunate than you.X But, also, we have had
the grace to learn her lesson ; and that, we think,
we may ascribe to our intelligence. For, con-
sider, here in this lovely valley live thousands of
souls without any law save that of custom, with-
out any rule save that of their own hearths.
Industrious they are, as you hardly know indus-
try in Europe ; but it is the industry of free men
working for their kith and kin, on the lands they
received from their fathers, to transmit, enriched
by their labors, to their sons. They have no
other ambition ; they do not care to amass wealth ;
and if in each generation some must needs go
out into the world, it is with the hope, not com-
monly frustrated, to return to the place of their
birth and spend their declining years among the
scenes and faces that were dear to their youth.
Among such a people there is no room for fierce,
indecent rivalries. None is master, none servant ;
but equality, concrete and real, regulates and
[23]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

sustains their intercourse. Healthy toil, suffi-
cient leisure, frank hospit&Hty, a content born
of habit and undisturbed by chimerical ambi-
tions, a sense of beauty fostered by the loveliest
Nature in the world, and finding expression in
gracious and dignified manners where it is not
embodied in exquisite works of art — such are
the char aj^teri sties of the people among whom I
was born. jD°es my memory flatter me? Do I
idealize tHe scenes of my youth? It may be so.
But this I know: that some such life as I have
described, reared on the basis of labor on the
soil, of equality and justice, does exist and
flourish frhpughout the length and breadth of
China. \ What have you to offer in its place, you
our would-be civilizers? Your religion? Alas!
it is in the name of that that you are doing un-
namable deeds ! Your morals ? Where shall
we find them ? Your intelligence ? Whither has

it led ? I What counter-picture have you to offer

•"" ~*<J
over here in England to this which I have drawn

of life in China? That is the question which
I have now to endeavor to reply.
[24]

IV

In attempting to lay before you a characteristic
scene of Chinese life I selected for the purpose a
community of peasants. I did so because it is
there that I find the typical product of our civ-
ilization. Cities, it is true, we have, and cities
as monstrous, perhaps, as yours; but they are
mere excrescences on a body politic whose es-
sential constitution is agricultural. With you all
this is reversed; and for that reason you have
no country life deserving the name. On the one
hand waste of common and moor, on the other
villas and parks, laborers poorly clad, wretch-
edly housed, and miserably paid, dreary villages,
decaying farms, squalor, brutality, and vice —
such is the picture you give, yourselves, of your
agricultural districts. Whatever in England is
not urban is parasitic or moribund. If, then, I
am to give an impression that shall be candid
and just of the best results of your civilizationj
[25]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

I must turn from the country to the life of your
great cities. And in doing so I will not seek to
win an easy victory by dwelling unduly on those
more obvious points which you no less than I
admit and deplore. Your swarming slums, your
liquor-saloons, your poor-houses, your prisons —
these, it is true, are melancholy facts. But the
evils of which they are symptoms you are set-
ting yourselves to cure, and your efforts, I do
not doubt, may be attended with a large measure
of success. It is rather the goal to which you
seem to be moving when you have done the best
you can that I would choose to consider in this
place. Your typical product, your average man,
the man you call respectable, him it is that I
wish to characterize, for he it is that is the nat-
ural and inevitable outcome of your civilization.
What manner of man, then, is he? It is with
some hesitation that I set myself to answer this
question. I am a stranger among you; I have
enjoyed your hospitality; and I am loath to
seem to repay you with discourtesy. But if there
be any service I can do you, I know none greater
[26]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

than to bring home to you, if I could, without
undue offence, certain important truths (so they
seem to me) to which you appear to be singularly
blind. Your feet, I believe, are set on the wrong
path ; I would fain warn you ; and useless though
the warning may be, it is offered in the spirit of
friendship, and in that spirit, I hope, it will be
received.

| When I review my impressions of the average
English citizen, impressions based on many
years' study, what kind of man do I see ? I see
one divorced from Nature, but unreclaimed by
Art; instructed, but not educated; assimilative,
but incapable of thought. | Trained in the tenets
of a religion in which he does not really believe
— for he sees it flatly contradicted in every re-
lation of life — he dimly feels that it is prudent
to conceal under a mask of piety the atheism
he is hardly intelligent enough to avow. His
religion is conventional; and, what is more im-
portant, his morals are as conventional as his
creed. jCharity, chastity, self-abnegation, con-
tempt of the world and its prizes — these are the
[27]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

words on which he has been fed from his child-
hood upwardJ And words they have remained,
for neither has he anywhere seen them practised
by others, nor has it ever^occurred to him to
practise them himself. (Their influence, while
it is. strong enough to make him a chronic hypo-
crite, is not so strong as to show him the hypo-
crite he is. ^Deprived on the one hand of the
support of a true ethical standard, embodied
in the life of the society of which he is a mem-
ber, he is duped, on the other, by lip-worship
of an impotent ideal. Abandoned thus to his
instinct, he is content to do as others do, and,
ignoring the things of the spirit, to devote him-
self to material ends. He becomes a mere tool;
and of such your society is composed. By your
works you may be known. I Your triumphs in the
mechanical arts are the obverse of your failure
in all that calls for spiritual insightTl Machinery
of every kind you can make and use to perfec-
tion; but you cannot build a house, or write a
poem, or paint a picture; still less can you wor-
ship or aspire. Look at your streets! Row
[28]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

upon row of little boxes, one like another, lack-
ing in all that is essential, loaded with all that
is superfluous — this is what passes among you
for architecture. Your literature is the daily
press, with its stream of solemn fatuity, of anec-
dotes, puzzles, puns, and police-court scandal.
Your pictures are stories in paint, transcripts of
all that is banal, clumsily botched by amateurs
as devoid of tradition as of genius. Your outer
sense as well as your inner is dead; you are
blind and deaf. Ratiocination has taken the
place of perception; ai^d your whole life is an
infinite syllogism from premises you have not
examined to conclusions you have not anticipated
or willed. Everywhere means, nowhere an end \)
Society a huge engine, and that engine itself out
of gear! Such is the picture your civilization
presents to my imagination. I will not say that
it is so that it appears to every intelligent China-
man; for the Chinese, unlike you, are constitu-
tionally averse to drawing up an indictment
against a nation. If I have been led into that
error, it is under strong provocation ; and already
129]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

I feel that I owe you an apology. Yet what I
have said I cannot withdraw; and I shall not
regret that I have spoken if I may hope that
my words have suggested to some among my
readers a new sense in the cry, "China for the
Chinese!"

When I was first brought into contact with the
West what most immediately impressed me was
the character and range of your intelligence. I
found that you had brought your minds to bear,
with singular success, upon problems which had
not even occurred to us in the East; that by
analysis and experiment you had found the clue
to the operation of the forces of nature, and had
turned them to account in ways which, to my un-
travelled imagination, appeared to be little short
of miraculous. Nor has familiarity diminished
my admiration for your achievements in this
field. I recognize in them your chief and most
substantial claim to superiority, and I am not
surprised that some of the more intelligent of
my countrymen should be advocating with ardor
their immediate introduction into China. I sym-
pathize with the enthusiasm of these reformers,
but I am unable, nevertheless, to endorse their
[81]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

policy; and it may be worth while to set down
here the reasons which have led me to a conclu-
sion which may appear at first sight to be
paradoxical.

/ The truth is that a study of your history
during the past century and a closer acquaint-
ance with the structure of your society has con-
siderably modified my original point of view/] I
have learnt that the most brilliant discoveries^
the most fruitful applications of inventive
genius, do not of themselves suffice for the well-
being of society •) and that an intelligence which
is concentrated exclusively on the production of
labor-saving machines may easily work more
harm by the dislocation of industry than it can
accomplish good by the increase of wealth.
For the increase of wealth — that is, of the
means to comfort — is not, to my mind, neces-
sarily good in itself; everything depends on the
way in which the wealth is distributed and on
its effect on the moral character of the nation.
And it is from that point of view that I look
with some dismay upon the prospect of the in-
[32]

LETTERS PROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

troduction of Western methods into China. An
example will best explain my point. When we
began to construct our first railway, from
Tientsin to Peking, the undertaking excited
among the neighboring populace an opposition
which quickly developed into open riot. The
line was torn up, bridges were destroyed, and it
was impossible to continue the work. We there-
fore, according to our custom in China, sent
down to the scene of action, not a force of police,
but an official to interview the rioters and ascer-
tain their point of view. It was as usual a per-
fectly reasonable one. They were a boating
population, subsisting by the traffic of the canal,
and they feared that the railway would deprive
them of their means of livelihood. The Gov-
ernment recognized the justice of their plea;
they gave the required guarantee that the traffic
by water should not seriously suffer, and there
was no further trouble or disturbance. The
episode is a good illustration of the way in which
we regard these questions. Englishmen to
whom I have spoken of the matter have invari-
[33]

LETTERS FBOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

ably listened to my account with astonishment
not unmingled with indignation. To them it
seems a monstrous thing that Government should
pay any regard whatever to such representations
on the part of the people. They speak of the
laws of supply and demand, of the ultimate ab-
sorption of labor, of competition, progress, mo-
bility and the "long-run." To all this I listen
with more or less comprehension and acquies-
cence; but it cannot conceal from me the fact
that the introduction of new methods means, at
any rate for the moment, so much dislocation of
labor, so much poverty, suffering, and starvation.
Of this your own industiial history gives abun-
dant proof. And I cannot but note with regret
and disappointment that in all these years during
which you have been perfecting the mechanical
arts you have not apparently even attempted,
you certainly have not attempted with success,
to devise any means to obviate the disturbance
and distress to which you have subjected your
laboring population. This, indeed, is not sur-
prising, for it is your custom to subordinate life
[84]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

to wealth; but neither, to a Chinaman, is it en-
couraging; and I, at least, cannot contemplate
without the gravest apprehension the disorders
which must inevitably ensue among our popula-
tion of four hundred millions upon the intro-
duction, on a large scale, of Western methods
of industry. You will say that the disorder is
temporary; to me it appears, in the West, to be
chronic. But putting that aside, what, I may
ask, are we to gain? The gain to you is pal-
pable; so, I think, is the loss to us. But where
is our gain? The question, perhaps, may seem
to you irrelevant; but a Chinaman may be for-
given for thinking it important. You will an-
swer, no doubt, that we shall gain wealth.
Perhaps we shall; but shall we not lose life?
Shall we not become like you? And can you
expect us to contemplate that with equanimity?
1 What are your advantages ? Your people, no
doubt, are better equipped than ours with somr
of the less important goods of life; they eat
more, drink more, sleep more; but there their
superiority ends. They are less cheerful, less
[35]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

contented, less industrious, less law-abiding ; their
occupations are more unhealthy both for body
and mind; they are crowded into cities and fac-
tories, divorced from Nature and the ownership
of the soil/] On all this I have already dwelt at
length; I only recur to it here in explanation
of a position which may appear to you to be
perverse — the position of one who, while gen-
uinely admiring the products of Western intel-
ligence, yet doubts whether that intelligence has
not been misapplied, or at least whether its di-
rection has not been so one-sided that it is likely
to have been productive of as much harm as good.
You may, indeed — and I trust you will — rectify
this error and show yourselves as ingenious in
organizing men as you have been in dominating
Nature. But meantime we may, perhaps, be
pardoned if even when we most admire we yet
hesitate to adopt your Western methods, and feel
that the advantages which might possibly ensue
will be dearly bought by the disorders that have
everywhere accompanied their introduction.
And there is another point which weighs with
[36]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFIClAl

me, one less obvious, perhaps, but not less im-
portant. In any society it must always be the
case that the mass of men are absorbed in me-
chanical labors. It is so in ours no less, though
certainly no more, than in yours; and, so far,
this condition does not appear to have been
affected by the introduction of machinery. But,
on the other hand, in every society there arej or
should be, men who are relieved from this servi-
tude to matter and free to devote themselves to
higher ends. In China, for many centuries past,
there has been a class of men set apart from the
first to the pursuit of liberal arts, and destined
to the functions of government. These men
form no close hereditary caste; it is open to
anyone to join them who_possesses the requisite
talent and inclination\ and in this respect our
society has long been theNnost democratic in the
world/ The education to which we subject this
official class is a matter of frequent and adverse
comment among you, and it is not my intention
here to undertake its defence. What I wish to
point out is the fact that, by virtue of this in-
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LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

stitution, we have inculcated and we maintain
among our people of all classes a respect for
the things of the mind and of the spirit, to which
it would be hard to find a parallel in Europe,
and of which, in particular, there is no trace in
England. In China letters are respected not
merely to a degree but in a sense which must
seem, I think; to you unintelligible and over-
strained. But there is a reason for it. Our
poets and literary men have taught their suc-
cessors, for long generations, to look for good
not in wealth, not in power, not in miscellaneous
activity, but in a trained, a choice, an exquisite
appreciation of the- most simple and universal
relations of life. / To feel, and in order to feel
to express, or at lenst to understand the expres-
sion of all that is lovely in Nature, of all that
is poignant and sensitive in man, is to us in
itself a sufficient end. A rose in a moonlit gar-
den, the shadow of trees on the turf, almond
bloom, scent of pine, the wine-cup and the
guitar; these and the pathos of life and death,
the long embrace, the hand stretched out in vain,
the moment that glides for ever away, with its
[38]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

freight of music and light, into the shadow and
hush of the haunted past, all that we have, all
that eludes us, a bird on the wing, a perfume
escaped on the gale — to all these things we are
trained to respond, and the response is what we
call literature. This we have; this you cannot
give us; but this you may so easily take away.
Amid the roar of looms it cannot be heard; it
cannot be seen in the smoke of factories; it is
killed by the wear and the whirl of Western life.
And when I look at your business men, the men
whom you most admire; when I see them hour
after hour, day after day, year after year, toil-
ing in the mill of their forced and undelighted
labors; when I see them importing the anxieties
of the day into their scant and grudging leisure,
and wearing themselves out less by toil than by
carking and illiberal cares, I reflect, I confess,
with satisfaction on the simpler routine of our
ancient industry, .and prize, above all your new
and dangerous routes, the beaten track so fa-
miliar to our accustomed feet that we have leis-
ure, even while we pace it, to turn our gaze up
to the eternal stars.

1391

VI

Among Chinese institutions there is none that
provokes the European mind to more hostile and
contemptuous comment than our system of
government. The inadequate salaries of our
officials and the consequent temptation, to which
they frequently succumb, to extort money by
illegitimate means, is productive of much annoy-
ance to foreigners ; nor have I anything to say in
defence of a practice so manifestly undesirable.
At the same time, I cannot but note that cor-
ruption of this kind is a far less serious evil in
China than it is, when it prevails, among your-
selves. I With you the function of government is
so important and so ubiquitous that you can
hardly realize the condition of a people that is
able almost wholly to dispense with it.^ Yet such
is our case. The simple and natural character
of our civilization, the peaceable nature of our
people (when they are not maddened by the ag-
[40]

1ETTEBS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

gression of foreigners), above all, the institution
of the family, itself a little state — a political,
social, and economic unit — these and other facts
have rendered us independent of government
control to an extent which to Europeans may
seem incredible. Neither the acts nor the omis-
sions of the authorities at Peking have any real
or permanent effect on the life of our masses,
except so far as they register the movements of
popular sentiment and demand. Otherwise, as
you foreigners know to your cost, they remain
a dead-letter. The Government may make con-
ventions and treaties, but it cannot put them into
effect, except in so far as they are endorsed by
public opinion. The passive resistance of so
vast a people, rooted in a tradition so immemo-
rial, will defeat in the future, as it has done in
the past, the attempts of the Western Powers
to impose their will on the nation through the
agency of the Government. No force will ever
suffice to stir that huge inertia. The whirlwind
of war for a moment may ruffle the surface of
the sea, may fleck with foam its superficial cur-
(41)

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

rents; it will never shake or trouble the clear
unfathomable deep whieh is the still and brood-
ing soul of China.

If our people are ever to be moved, their rea-
son and their heart must be convinced; and this
lesson, which you in Europe are so slow to learn,
was embodied centuries ago in the practice and
theory of our State. Government with us is
based on the consent of the people to a degree
which you of the West can hardly understand,
much less imitate. What you have striven so
vainly to achieve by an increasingly elaborate
machinery happens among us by the mere force
of facts./ Our fundamental institutions are no
arbitrary ^inventions of power; they are the form
which the people have given to their life. No
Government created and no Government would
think of modifying them. And if from time
to time it becomes desirable to add to them such
further regulations as the course of events may
seem to suggest, these, too, are introduced only
in response to a real demand, and after proof
made of their efficacy and popularity. Law, in
[42]

/^uUA- O OUV J&XW4JL iyw-45 U /

LETTERS FROJVI A CHINESE OFFICIAL

a word, is not, with us, a rule imposed from
above ; it is the formula of the national life ; and
its embodiment in practice precedes its inscrip-
tion in a code. Hence it is that in China gov-
ernment is neither arbitrary nor indispensably
Destroy our authorities, central and provincial,
and our life will proceed very much as before.
The law we obey is the law of our own nature,
as it has been evolved by centuries of experience,
and to this we continue our allegiance, even
though the external sanction be withdrawn.
Come what may, the family remains, with all that
it involves, the attitude of mind remains, the

spirit of order, industry, and thrift. These it

"
is that make up China; and the Governments

we have passively received are Governments only

so long as they understand that it is not theirs

•

to govern, but merely to express in outward
show, to formulate and define, an order which
in essentials they must accept as they accept
the motions of the heavens. China does not
change. The tumults of which you make so
much, and of which you are yourselves the cause,
[43]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

are no signs of the break-up of our civilization.
You hear the breakers roaring on the shore; but
far away beyond your ken, unsailed by ship of
yours, stretch to the blue horizon the silent
spaces of the sea.

How different is the conception and fact of
government in the West! Here there are no
fundamental laws, but an infinity of arbitrary
rules. Nothing roots except what has been
planted; nothing is planted but what must be
planted again. During the past hundred years
you have dismantled your whole society. Prop-
erty and marriage, religion, morality, distinctions
of rank and class, all that is most important
and most profound in human relationships,
has been torn from the roots and floats like
wreckage down the stream of time. Hence
the activity of your Governments, for it is only
by their aid that your society holds together at
all. Government with you is thus important to
an extent and degree happily inconceivable in
the East. This in itself appears to me an evil;
but it is one that I see to be inevitable. All the
[441

SETTEES FKOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

more am I surprised at what I cannot but regard
as the extraordinary inefficiency of the machinery
on which you rely to accomplish so vast a work.
It is, I am aware, hard, perhaps impossible, to
discover or devise any sure and certain method
of selecting competent men; but surely it is
strange to make no attempt to ascertain or secure
any degree of moral or intellectual capacity in
those to whom you entrust such important func-
tions ! Our own plan in China of selecting our
rulers by competitive examination is regarded
by you with a contempt not altogether unde-
served. Yet you adopt it yourselves in the choice
of your subordinate officials; and it has at least
the merit of embodying the rational idea that
the highest places in the Government should be
open to all, rich or poor, who have given proof
of ability and talent, and that they should be
open to no others. Compared to the method of
election it appears to me to be reason itself.
For what does election mean? You say that it
means representation of the people; but do you
not know in your hearts that it means, and can
[45]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

mean, nothing of the kind? What is really rep-
resented is Interests. And in what are Interests
interested? Your reply, I suspect, will be, In
public abuses ! Landlords, brewers, railway di-
rectors— is it not these that really rule you?
And must it not be so while your society is con-
stituted as it is? There is, I am aware, a party
which hopes to bring to bear against these the
brute and overwhelming force of the Mass. But
such a remedy, even if it were practicable, does
not commend itself to my judgment; for the
Mass in your society is itself an Interest. The
machinery which you have provided appears
to aim at bringing together in a cockpit egotistic
forces bent upon private goods, in order that
they may arrive, by dint of sheer fighting, at a
result which shall represent the good of the
whole. It is perhaps the inveterate respect, in-
herent in every Chinaman, for the authority of
morality and reason, that prevents me from re-
garding such a procedure with the enthusiasm
or even the toleration which it seems commonly
to arouse among yourselves. When problems of
[46]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

such vast importance have devolved upon, and
must be assumed by, a Government, I cannot but
think that some better means might have been
devised for interesting in their solution the best
talent of the nation. And I am confirmed in
this view by the reflection that I have met in
your universities and elsewhere men who have
profoundly studied the questions your Legis-
lature is expected to determine, whose intelli-
gence is clear, whose judgment unbiassed, whose
enthusiasm disinterested and pure, but who can
never hope for a chance of putting their wisdom
to practical effect, because their temperament,
their training, and their habit of life, have un-
fitted them for the ordeal of popular election.
To be a member of Parliament is, it would seem,
a profession in itself, and the qualities, intellect-
ual and moral, which open the door to a public
career appear to be distinct from, and even in-
compatible with, those which contribute to pub
lie utility.

[47]

VII

To grave and fundamental distinctions of na~
tional character and life commonly correspond
similar distinctions in religious belief. For re-
ligion is, or should be, the soul of which the
State is the body, the idea which informs and
perpetuates institutions. It is not, I am aware,
in this sense that the word is always understood,
for religion is not seldom identified with super-
stition. I propose, however, in this place to dis-
tinguish the two, and to concern myself mainly
with what I conceive to be properly termed re-
ligion. But I note, at the outset, that among
the masses of China superstition is as widely
spread as among those of any European country.
Buddhism and Taoism lend themselves with us
to practices and beliefs as regrettable and ab-
surd as any that are fostered by Christianity
among yourselves. Our people, like yours, hope
by ritual and prayer to affect the course of the
[48]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

elements or to compass private and material
benefits; they believe in spirits and goblins, as
Roman Catholics do in saints; they worship
idols, practise magic, and foster the impositions
of priests. But all this I pass by as extraneous
to true religion. I regard it merely as a mani-
festation of the weakness of human nature, a
vent for the peccant humors of the individual
soul. Different indeed is the creed and the cult
on which our civilization is founded; and it is
to this, which has been so much misunderstood
by Europeans, that I propose to devote a few
words of explanation.

Confucianism, it is sometimes said, is not a
religion at all; and if by religion be meant a set
of dogmatic propositions dealing with a super-
natural world radically distinct from our own,
the statement is, no doubt, strictly true. It was,
in fact, one of the objects of Confucius to dis-
courage preoccupation with the supernatural,
and the true disciple endeavors in this respect
to follow in his master's footsteps. "Beware of
religion," a Mandarin says, meaning "beware of
[49]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

superstition"; and in this sense, but in this sense
only, Confucianism is irreligious. Again, it is
said that Confucianism is merely an ethical sys-
tem; and this, too, is true, in so far as its whole
aim and purport is to direct and inspire right
conduct. But, on the other hand — and this is
the point I wish to make — it is not me r fly a
teaching, but a life. The principles it enjoins
are those which are actually embodied in the
structure of our society, so that they are incul-
cated not merely by written and spoken word,
but by the whole habit of everyday experience.
The unity of the family and the State, as ex-
pressed in the worship of ancestors, is the basis
not merely of the professed creed, but of the
actual practice of a Chinaman. To whatever
other faith he may adhere — Buddhist, Taoist,
Christian — this is the thing that really matters
to him. To him the generations past and the
generations to come form with those that are
alive one single whole. All live eternally,
though it is only some that happen at any mo-
ment to live upon earth. Ancestor-worship is
[50]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

thus the symbol of a social idea immense in its
force to consolidate and bind. Its effects in
China must be seen to be believed ; but you have
a further example in a civilization with which
you are better acquainted — I mean, of course,
the civilization of Rome.

This, then, is the first and most striking
aspect of our national religion; but there is an-
other hardly less important in its bearing on
social life. Confucianism is the exponent of the
ideal of work. Your eighteenth-century obser-
vers, who laid so much stress on the ritual of the
Emperor's yearly ploughing, were nearer to the
heart of our civilization than many later and less
sympathetic inquirers. The duty of man to
labor, and primarily to labor on the soil, is a
fundamental postulate of our religion. Hence
the worship of Mother Earth, the source of all
increase ; hence the worship of Heaven, the giver
of light and rain ; and hence also that social sys-
tem whose aim is to secure a general access to
the soil. The willing dedication of all, in
brotherhood and peace, to labor blessed by the
[51]

LETTERS FKOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

powers of heaven and earth, such is the simple,
intelligible ideal we have set before our people,
such is the conception we have embodied in our
institutions. And if you seek more than this,
a metaphysical system to justify and explain
our homely creed, that too we have provided for
our scholars. Humanity, they are taught, is a
Being spiritual and eternal, manifesting itself
in time in the series of generations. This Being
is the mediator between heaven and earth, be
tween the ultimate ideal and the existing fact.
By labor, incessant and devout, to raise earth to
heaven, to realize, in fact, the good that as yet
exists only in idea — that is the end and purpose
of human life; and in fulfilling it we achieve
and maintain our unity each with every other,
and all with the Divine. Here, surely, is a faith
not unworthy to be called a religion. I do not
say that it is consciously held by the mass of
the people, for in no State does the mass of the
people reflect. But I claim for us that the life
of our masses is so ordered and disposed as to
accord with the postulates of our creed; that
[52]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

they practise, if they do not profess, the tenets
of our sages ; and that the two cardinal ideas on
which every society should rest, brotherhood and
the dignity of labor, are brought home to them
in direct and unmistakable form by the structure
of our secular institutions.

Such, then, in a few words, is the. essence of
Confucianism, as it appears to an educated
Chinaman. Far harder is it for me, though I
have spent so long in Europe, to appreciate the
significance of Christianity. But perhaps I may
be pardoned if I endeavor to record my im-
pressions, such as they are, gathered from some
study of your sacred books, your history, and
your contemporary life. In such observations as
I have made I have had in view the question not
so much of the truth of your religion — of that
I do not feel competent to judge — as of its
bearing upon your social institutions. And here,
more than anywhere, I am struck by the wide
discrepancy between your civilization and ours.
I cannot see that your society is based upon re-
ligion at all; nor does that surprise me, if I
[53]

LETTERS FEOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

have rightly apprehended the character of
Christianity. For the ideal which I seem to find
enshrined in your gospels and embodied in the
discussions of your divines is one not of labor
on earth, but of contemplation in heaven; not
of the unity of the human race, but of the com-
munion of saints. Whether this be a higher ideal
than our own I do not venture to pronounce;
but I cannot but hold it to be less practicable.
It must be difficult, one would think, if not im-
possible to found any stable society on the con-
ception that life upon earth is a mere episode
in a drama whose centre of action lies elsewhere.
An indifference to what, from a more mundane

point of view, must appear to be fundamental
^k. ^^

considerations, a confusion of temporal distinc-
tions in the white blaze of eternity, a haphazard
organization of those details of corporate life
the serious preoccupation with which would be
hardly compatible with religion — such would
appear to be the natural result of a genuine
profession of Christianity. And such, if I un-
derstand it aright, was the character of youi
[54]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

civilization in what you describe as the Ages of
Faith. Asceticism, monastic vows, the domina-
tion of priests, the petty interests of life and

I Mk/^4/^^

death overshadowed and dwarfed by the tre-
mendous issues of heaven and hell, beggary t^J*^
sanctified, wealth contemned, reason stunted, vjji^
imagination hypertrophied, the spiritual and
temporal powers at war, body at feud with soul,
everywhere division, conflict, confusion, intel- f\ki

lectual and moral insanity — such was the char-
acter of that extraordinary epoch in Western
history when the Christian conception made a
bid to embody itself in fact. It was the life-
and-death struggle of a grandiose ideal against

^ ,vA ta^t^

all the facts of the material and moral universe.
And in that struggle the ideal was worsted.
From the dust of battle the Western world
emerged, as it had entered, secular: avowedly
worldly, frankly curious, bent with a passionate
zeal on the mastery of all the forces of nature,
on beauty, wealth, intelligence, character, power.
From that time on, although you still profess
Christianity, no attempt has been made to chris-
[55]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAI

tianize your institutions. On the contrary, it has
been your object to sweep away every remnant
of the old order, to dissociate Church from
State, ritual and belief from action. You have
abandoned your society frankly to economic and
political forces, with results which I have en-
deavored in an earlier letter to characterize.

But while thus, on the one hand, your society
has evolved on a purely material basis, on the
other religion has not ceased to be recognized
among you. Only, cut off from its natural root
in social institutions, it has assumed forms which
I cannot but think to be either otiose or dan-
gerous. Those who profess Christianity — and
there are few who, in one way or another, do
not — either profess it only with their lips, and
having in this way satisfied those claims of the
ideal from which no human being is altogether
free, turn back with an unencumbered mind and
conscience to the pursuit of egotistic ends; or
else, being seriously possessed by the teachings
of Christ, they find themselves almost inevitably
driven into the position of revolutionists. For
[56]

IV

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

those teachings, if they be fully accepted and
fairly interpreted, must be seen to be incom-
patible with the whole structure of your society.
Enunciated, centuries ago, by a mild Oriental
enthusiast, unlettered, untravelled, inexperienced,
they are remarkable not more for their tender
and touching appeal to brotherly love than for
their aversion or indifference to all other ele-
ments of human excellence. The subject of
Augustus and Tiberius lived and died unaware
of the history and destinies of imperial Rome;
the contemporary of Virgil and of Livy could
not read the language in which they wrote.
Provincial by birth, mechanic by trade, by tem-
perament a poet and a mystic, he enjoyed in the
course of his brief life few opportunities, and he
evinced little inclination, to become acquainted
with the rudiments of the science whose end is
the prosperity of the State. The production
and distribution of wealth, the disposition of
power, the laws that regulate labor, property,
trade, these were matters as remote from his
interests as they were beyond his comprehension.
[57]

LKTTEES FKOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

N^ver was man better equipped to inspire a re-
ligious sect; never one worse to found or direct
a commonwealth. Yet this man it is whose naive
maxims of self-abnegation have been accepted
as gospel by the nations of the West, the type
of all that is predatory, violent, and aggressive.
No wonder your history has been one long and
lamentable tale of antagonism, tumult, carnage,
and confusion ! No wonder the spiritual and
temporal powers have oscillated between open
war and truces as discreditable to the one as to
the other! No wonder that down to the present
day every man among you who has been gen-
uinely inspired with the spirit of your religion
has shrunk in horror from the society which
purports to have adopted its principles as its
own ! It is the Nemesis of an idealist creed that
it cannot inform realities; it can but mass to-
gether outside and in opposition to the estab-
lished order the forces that should have shaped
and controlled it from within. The spirit re-
mains uneinbodied, the body uninformed. So
is has been and so it is with this polity of yours.
[58)

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

It purports to represent a superhuman ideal ; in
reality, it does not represent even one that is
human. It is of the earth, earthy; while from
heaven far above cries, like a ghost's, the voice
of the Nazarene, as pure, as clear, as ineffectual, .
as when first it flung from the shores of Galilee
its challenge to the world-sustaining power of
Rome.

The view which I have thus ventured to give,
candidly, as I feel it, of the relation of your
society to your religion, will, I am aware, be re-
ceived by most of my readers with astonishment,
if not with indignation. Permit me, then, to
illustrate and confirm it by an example so patent
and palpable that it cannot fail, I think, to make
some appeal even to those who are most unwill-
ing to face the truth.

If there is one feature more marked than
another in the teaching of Christ it is his con-
demnation of every form of violence. No one
can read the Gospels with an unprejudiced mind
without being struck by the emphasis with which
he reiterates this doctrine. "Whosoever shall
[59]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the
other also." These are his words, and they are
spoken in sober earnestness, not in metaphor,
nor yet as a counsel of perfection, something
that should be but cannot be put into effect.
No ! they are the words of conviction and truth,
backed by the whole character and practice of
their author. The principle they embody may,
of course, be disputed. It may be held — as in
fact it always has been held by the majority of
men in all ages — that force is essential to the
preservation of society; that without it there
could be no security, no order, no peace. But
one who holds this view cannot be a Christian,
in the proper sense of a follower of Christ. If,
then, as is undoubtedly the case, this view has
been universally held throughout their whole
history by the nations of the West, then, what-
ever they may call themselves, they cannot be
truly Christian. Yet this consequence they have
always refused to accept. They have inter-
preted the words of their founder to mean the
reverse of what they say, and have conceived

[60]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

him, apparently without any sense of the sole-
cism they were perpetrating, to be the defender
and champion not only of their whole system
of law, based as it is on the prison and the scaf-
fold, but of all their wars, even of those which
to the natural sense of mankind must appear to
be the least defensible and the most iniquitous.
In proof of what I say — if proof be required —
I need not recur to historical examples. It will
be enough to refer to the case which is naturally
most present to my mind — the recent attack of
the Western Powers on China. That there was
grave provocation, I am not concerned to deny,
though it was not with us that the provocation
originated. But what fills me with amazement
and even, if I must be frank, with horror, is
the fact that the nations of Europe should at-
tempt to justif}^ their acts from the standpoint
of the Gospel of Christ; and that there should
be found among them a Christian potentate who,
in sending forth his soldiers on an errand of
revenge, should urge them, in the name of him
who bade us turn the other cheek, not merely
[61]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

to attack, not merely to kill, but to kill without
quarter! What further proof is needed of the
truth of my general proposition that the religion
you profess, whatever effect it may have on in-
dividual lives, has little or none on public policy ?
It may inspire, here and there, some retired
saint; it has never inspired those who control
the State. What use is it, then, to profess that,
in essence, it is a religion higher than ours? I
care not to dispute on ground so barren. "By
their fruits ye shall know them," said your own
prophets; and to their fruits I am content to
appeal. Confucianism may, as you affirm, be
no religion at all; it may be an inferior ethical
code; but it has made of the Chinese the one
nation in all the history of the world who gen-
uinely abhor violence and reverence reason 2nd
right. And here, lest you think that I am
biassed, let me call to my aid the testimony of
the one among your countrymen who has known
us intimately and long, and whose services to
our State will never be forgotten by any patriotic
Chinaman. In place of the ignorant diatribes
[62]

o--

j,

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

of your special correspondents, listen for a mo-
ment to the voice of Sir Robert Hart:

"They are/' he says of the Chinese, "well-
behaved, law-abiding, intelligent, -economical,
and industrious; they can learn anything and
do anything; they are punctiliously polite, they
worship talent, and they believe in right so
firmly that they scorn to think it requires to be
supported or enforced by might; they delight
in literature, and everywhere they have their lit-
erary clubs and coteries for learning and dis-
cussing each other's essays and verses; they
possess and practise an admirable system of
ethics, and they are generous, charitable, and
fond of good works; they never forget a favor,
they make rich return for any kindness, and,
though they know money will buy service, a man
must be more than wealthy to win public esteem
and respect; they are practical, teachable, and
wonderfully gifted with common-sense; they
are excellent artisans, reliable workmen, and of
a good faith that everyone acknowledges and
admires in their commercial dealings; in no
[63]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

country that is or was, has the commandment
'Honor thy father and thy mother' been so re-
ligiously obeyed, or so fully and without excep-
tion given effect to, and it is in fact the keynote
of their family, social, official, and national life,
and because it is so 'their days are long in the
land God has given them/ '

Thus Sir Robert Hart. I ask no better testi-
monial. Here are no superhuman virtues, no
abnegation of self, no fanatic repudiation of
fundamental facts of human nature. But here
is a life according to a rational ideal ; and here
is a belief in that ideal so effective and profound
that it has gone far to supersede the use of force.
"They believe in right," says Sir Robert Hart —
let me quote it once more — "they believe in right
so firmly that they scorn to think it requires to
be supported or enforced by might." Yes, it
is we who do not accept it that practise the
Gospel of peace; it is you who accept it thai
trample it underfoot. And — irony of ironies ! — it
is the nations of Christendom who hav« come
to us to teach us by sword and fire that Right
[64]

LETTERS FROM A CHINJbSE OFFICIAL

in this world is Dowerless unless it be supported
by Might ! Oh, do not doubt that we shall learn
the lesson! And woe to Europe when we have
acquired it! You are arming a nation of four
hundred millions ! a nation which, until you
came, had no better wish than to live at peace
with themselves and all the world. In the name
of Christ you have sounded the call to arms!
In the name of Confucius we respond!

^

to

VIII

Hitherto I have avoided any discussion in de-
tail of the existing political and commercial
relations between ourselves and the West, and
of the events which led up to the situation we
all deplore. I have endeavored rather to enlist
your sympathies in the general character of our
civilization, to note the salient points in which
it differs from your own, and to bring into relief
the more fundamental and permanent conditions
which render an understanding between us so
difficult and so precarious. I cannot, however,
disguise from myself that even a sympathetic
reader may fairly demand of me something
more; and that if I am to satisfy him, I am
bound, however unwillingly, to enter upon the
field of current controversy. For, he may rea-
sonably inquire, If it be really true that your
people possess the qualities you ascribe to them,
if they be indeed so just, so upright, so averse
[66]

LETTEKS FEOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

to violence, how is it that they have committed

the greatest breach of international comity that

is known in the history of the civilized world ? -^.^KiAM

How is it that they have been guilty of acts

which have shocked and outraged the moral sense r^jj^

of communities, according to you, less cultured

and humane than themselves? «

In reply, I will urge that I have never as-

,AJL '\

serted that the Chinese are saints. I have said,
and I still maintain, that if they are left to
themselves, if the order to which they are ac-
customed is not violently disturbed, they are the
most peaceful and law-abiding nation on the
face of the earth. If, then, they have broken
loose from their secular restraints, if they have
shown for a moment those claws of the brute
which no civilization, be it yours or ours, though
it may sheathe, will ever draw, the very violence

of the outbreak serves only to prove how intense J^

must have been the provocation. Do you realize
what that provocation was? I doubt it! Per-
mit me then briefly to record the facts.

When first your traders came to China it was
[67]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

not at our invitation; yet we received them, if
not with enthusiasm, at least with tolerance. So
long as they were content to observe our regu-
lations we were willing to sanction their traffic,
but always on the condition that it should not
disturb our social and political order. To this
condition, in earlier days, your countrymen con-
sented to conform, and for many years, in spite
of occasional disputes, there was no serious
trouble between them and us. The trouble arose
over a matter in regard to which you yourselves
have hardly ventured to defend your own con-
duct. A considerable part of your trade was
the trade in opium. The use of this drug, we
observed, was destroying the health and the
morals of our people, and we therefore pro-
hibited the trade. Your merchants, however,
evaded the law; opium was smuggled in; till at
last we were driven to take the matter into our
own hands and to seize and destroy the whole
stock of the forbidden drug. Your Government
made our action an excuse for war. You in-
[68]

LETTEBS FBOM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

vaded our territory, exacted an indemnity,
and took from us the island of Hong-Kong.
Was this an auspicious beginning? Was it
calculated to impress us with a sense of the
justice and fair play of the British nation?
Years went on; a petty dispute about the
privileges of the flag — a dispute in which
we still believe that we were in the right —
brought us once more into collision with you.
You made the unfortunate conflict an excuse for
new demands. In conjunction with the French
you occupied our capital and imposed upon us
terms which you would never have dared to
offer to a European nation. We submitted be-
cause we must; we were not a military Power.
But do you suppose our sense of justice was not
outraged? Or later, when every Power in
Europe on some pretext or other has seized and
retained some part of our territory, do you sup-
pose because we cannot resist that we do not
feel? To a Chinaman who reviews the history
of our relations with you during the past sixty

169]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

years and more must you not naturally appear
to be little better than robbers and pirates?
True, such a view is unduly harsh, and I do not
myself altogether share it. A study of your
official documents has convinced me that you
genuinely believe that you have had on your
side a certain measure of right, and I am too
well aware of the complexity of all human affairs
to deny that there may be something in your
point of view. Still, I would ask you to consider
the broad facts of the situation, dismissing the
interminable controversies that arise on every
point of detail. Which of us throughout has
been the aggressor — we who, putting our case
at the worst, were obstinately resolved to main-
tain our society, customs, laws, and polity
against the influences of an alien civilization, or
you who, bent on commercial gains, were deter-
mined at all cost to force an entrance into our
territory and to introduce along with your goods
the leaven of your culture and ideas? If, in
the collision that inevitably ensued, we gave
cause of offence, we had at least the excuse of
[70]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

self-preservation. Our wrongs, if wrongs they
were, were episodes in a substantial right; but
yours were themselves the substance of your
action.

Consider for a moment the conditions you
have imposed on a proud and ancient empire,
an empire which for centuries has believed itself
to be at the head of civilization. You have
compelled us, against our will, to open our ports
to your trade; you have forced us to permit the
introduction of a drug which we believe is ruin-
ing our people; you have exempted your subjects
residing among us from the operation of our
laws; you have appropriated our coasting traf-
fic; you claim the traffic of our inland waters.
Every attempt on our part to resist your demands
has been followed by new claims and new ag-
gressions. And yet all this time you have posed
as civilized peoples dealing with barbarians.
You have compelled us to receive your mission-
aries, and when they by their ignorant zeal have
provoked our people to rise in mass against
them, that again you have made an excuse for

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

new depredations, till we, not unnaturally, have
come to believe that the cross is the pioneer of
the sword, and that the only use you have for
your religion is to use it as a weapon of war.
Conceive for a moment the feelings of an Eng-
lishman subjected to similar treatment; conceive
that we had permanently occupied Liverpool,
Bristol, Plymouth; that we had planted on your
territory thousands of men whom we had ex-
empted from your laws; that along your coasts
and navigable rivers our vessels were driving
out yours; that we had insisted on your admit-
ting spirits duty free to the manifest ruin of
your population; and that we had planted in all
your principal towns agents to counteract the
teachings of your Church and undermine the
whole fabric of habitual belief on which the
stability of your society depends. Imagine that
you had to submit to all this. Would you be
so greatly surprised, would you really even be
indignant, if you found one day the Chinese Le-
gation surrounded by a howling mob and Con-
fucian missionaries everywhere hunted k death?
172]

LETTERS FROM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

What right then have you to be surprised, what
right have you to be indignant at even the worst
that has taken place in China? What is there
so strange or monstrous in our conduct? A
Legation, you say, is sacrosanct by the law of
nations. Yes; but remember that it was at the
point of the sword that you forced us to receive
Embassies whose presence we have always re-
garded as a sign of national humiliation. But
our mobs were barbarous and cruel. Alas! yes.
And your troops? And your troops, nations of
Christendom? Ask the once fertile land from
Peking to the coast; ask the corpses of murdered
men and outraged women and children; ask
the innocent mingled indiscriminately with the
guilty; ask the Christ, the lover of men, whom
you profess to serve, to judge between us who
rose in mad despair to save our country and you
who, avenging crime with crime, did not pause
to reflect that the crime you avenged was the
fruit of your own iniquity !

Well, it is over — over, at least, for the mo-
ment. I do »:ot wish to dwell upon the past.
[73]

LETTERS FRQM A CHINESE OFFICIAL

Yet the lesson of the past is our only guide to the
policy of the future. And unless you of the
\^est will come to realize the truth; unless you
will understand that the events which have
shaken Europe are the Nemesis of a long course
of injustice and oppression; unless you will
learn that the profound opposition between your
civilization and ours gives no more ground why
you should regard us as barbarians than we you;
unless you will treat us as a civilized Power and
respect our customs and our laws ; unless you
will accord us the treatment you would accord
to any European nation and refrain from ex-
acting conditions you would never dream of
imposing on a Western Power — unless you will
do this, there is no hope of any peace between
us. You have humiliated the proudest nation in
the world; you have outraged the most upright
and just; with what results is now abundantly
manifest. If ignorance was your excuse, let it
be your excuse no longer. Learn to understand
us, and in doing so learn better to understand
yourselves. To contribute to rtris end has been

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